Preezy wrote:Karl wrote:book speak jibbersmarts
Fair enough.
Preezy wrote:Wouldn't it be fair to say though that women are objectively more gentle as a sex because their evolution has demanded it? Women that bear children are "forced" (through their biology) to care for the infant to prevent it from dying from neglect by the release of hormones (Oxytocin?) during breastfeeding? This makes every child-bearing woman inherently gentler and less prone to violence, as that would endanger their child, whereas the men don't have that same connection (shoot and scoot, as it were).
This is me spitballing off the top of my head, so go easy on me.
Sure. For what it's worth I don't think there's anything wrong/offensive/aggravating about asking that question, it's cool with me.
I do study endocrinology to an extent but I don't know much about the effects of oxytocin. I focus mostly on small-molecule neurotransmitters, particularly monoamines (this is more fancy nerd-talk for "stuff in your brain that looks like dopamine and serotonin", and all that looks very different to oxytocin). I'm aware oxytocin does, in layman's terms, biologically "force" you to imprint onto and love your baby, but it also "forces" you to freak the hell out - sometimes to heroic degrees, like women who have dug through avalanches to find their kids - if your baby is in danger. So I guess one point I think is interesting that it's not entirely a "docile-ising" hormone. Oxytocin isn't an exclusively female hormone either: oxytocin levels spike in men during and post ejaculation, for instance, which appears to be a way for your biology to push you towards forming an emotional bond with your partner (or your hand, heyooo!!!). So this doesn't really support the "innately shoot and scoot" theory of male sexuality.
So I don't think there's anything about oxytocin that would support the argument that women have an intrinsic quality of gentleness. The idea that women and men have intrinsic psychological and emotional qualities is called "gender essentialism". It's hard to Google & read about gender essentialism because it's currently a battleground within feminist academia, with a form of the idea being used (by a small but angry & loud minority of feminists) to simultaneously exclude trans women as well as discredit their existence -- the "trans-exclusionary" argument goes along the lines of "men have a 'male brain' and can never be women because of that; but if you say you feel like you have a 'female brain' then that's offensive, you can't define femininity in such base and sexist terms!", and I swear I'm not misrepresenting that, it's exactly as hypocritical and dumb as it sounds. Anyway, it's a minefield, but the short story is that the concept seems pretty flawed -- there are a few measurable differences in brain structure and psychology between men and women, but it doesn't tend to be anything like "women are inherently gentle", it tends to be technical points like "women on average have higher neuron density in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis".